Projects

Phase 1

Tainable Lab Demonstration Site

McMinnville, Oregon

In July 2025, Habitat Energy broke ground on its first demonstration facility in McMinnville, Oregon. The site was deliberately chosen as a greenfield location, ensuring the project yields the technical, logistical, and permitting lessons needed for rapid replication at similar sites across the region.

Facility Snapshot:

Structure: 100 ft long × 30 ft wide × 28 ft tall
Lease Term: 10-year site lease through Tainable Labs

Its modular, greenhouse-based approach takes a fresh new look at circular food waste and power/fuel

Habitat Energy is advancing a practical, circular solution for one of the most overlooked segments of the food waste stream—starch- and sugar-rich byproducts like waste bread, off-spec flour, and surplus syrups. While much of this material is currently sent to wastewater treatment plants, landfills, or compost facilities—systems that are often ill-suited to handle it—we are developing a more effective path forward: converting these high-energy feedstocks into renewable fuel ethanol.

Our approach centers on a small, modular, tote-based fermentation system designed for flexibility and scalability. Built to operate within greenhouse environments in the Pacific Northwest, this system is being optimized to efficiently process single-stream organic waste with minimal contamination and handling. By focusing on consistent, high-carbohydrate inputs, we can unlock real economic and environmental value from materials that are currently underutilized.

Though still in early stages, this work represents a promising step toward decentralized, low-impact energy production. By recovering the full value of food byproducts, Habitat Energy helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ease the burden on traditional waste infrastructure, and create a more resilient, circular food system—one where waste is not discarded, but transformed into a renewable resource.